Tech Tip Daily

Out of all of my recent acquisitions, my “coolest”, by far, is the 8gb flash drive.  Aside from high-definition DVD rips and a few “miscellaneous” files on P2P sites, I now have the capability to store at least 1 of the largest files in existence; a DVD rip (Ok, so I realize this statement consists of very little truth).  But still, 8gb of data is pretty cool.  And almost right away, I had use for it.  I needed to get a video file from computer A to computer B.  This file just so happened to be a 5.3gb, 720p version of the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Olympics (legally obtained, of course).

When I went to move the file from my PC to the thumb drive, I received an error stating that the file size had exceeded the available space on the destination.  “What?”  For a short time, I was completely confused, checking the properties of the drive to make sure that they hadn’t mislabeled/mispackaged a smaller drive in an 8gb container.  Suddenly, I remembered that the drive was formatted with the FAT32 file system.  Silly me…

In reality, it was by complete chance that I had remembered this, let alone learned it in the first place.  The quick “down and dirty” is that while this thumb drive was formatted in FAT32, it was unable to store files larger than 4 gigabytes, as this is a limitation of the FAT32 file system.  The science behind this is largely irrelevant but you may still find it through a simple google search.  Basically, the solution entails reformatting the thumb drive to the NTFS file system so that you can store larger files.

To format a drive as a different file system:

1. Open “My Computer”
2. Find the drive in question and right click it, selecting “format”.
3. Under the “File system” section, click the arrow in the drop down box and select your desired file system (NTFS, in this case).
4. Click “Start” at the bottom of the window.
5. A window will notify you that the operation has completed successfully.  Following, you may close the windows and copy your file.

It’s important to note that there are a few disadvantages to NTFS.  By nature, NTFS requires more “write” operations to the drive.  This results in slower performance of the drive, and in the long term, minimizes the life of the drive (Flash memory can only be written to a limited number of times).  The other disadvantage is that other operating systems don’t natively support the NTFS file system as much as Microsoft (some can only read but are unable to write).  Best practice would be to reformat the drive as FAT32 once you have used it for it’s large-file purpose.  Otherwise, with the price of flash memory as it is, you could probably leave it without any major problems.

That’s all!  Thanks, and happy computing!